The law of the instrument, law of the hammer, Maslow's hammer (or gavel), or golden hammer[a] is a cognitive bias that involves an over-reliance on a familiar tool. As Abraham Maslow said in 1966, "I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail."
The concept is attributed both to Maslow and to Abraham Kaplan, although the hammer and nail line may not be original to either of them.
The English expression "a Birmingham screwdriver," meaning a hammer, refers to the practice of using the one tool for all purposes, and predates both Kaplan and Maslow by at least a century.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment